Agroecology and Agroforestry: adapting systems and mitigating against climate change
Flagship Goal: To develop a portfolio of agroforestry and agroecology best practices, and their respective value chains, which are clearly linked to their capacity to increase carbon sequestration and/or reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
The agricultural sector has significant potential to assist with the mitigation of climate change by planting more woody perennials within agricultural lands (agroforestry), and through increasing the use of biodiversity at spatial and temporal scales (agroecology i.e. crop rotation, crop diversification). Increasing biodiversity promotes carbon sequestration, mainly due to the complementarity of different species when using the resources at scale. It can also help the agricultural sector to be more resilient and adaptable to the future impacts of climate change.
Several large national, regional and international research projects are currently underway in this space. These are mainly based on multi-actor approaches as a way to foster the implementation of both agroforestry and agroecology practices.
Climate change mitigation and adaptation are also driven by consumers, as key actors that add value to agricultural products. In this regard, the EU AF4EU project has been funded to understand the woody perennials value chains as main drivers to lead the increasing use of agroforestry.
This Flagship project will bring together a global network of experts, to link up and build on existing projects, and to conduct analyses under an agreed, common, LCA methodology. It will involve input from CRG Networks and will be linked to the new FAO strategy and the Global Alliance for Climate-Smart Agriculture Enabling Environment Action group (EEAG). The results will be included as a new section of the AFINET-AF4EU database which is currently linked to the GRA website.
Anticipated Outcomes
- A list of best practices linked to different regions of the world about innovative solutions linked to reaching carbon neutrality through the use of sustainable practices associated with agroforestry and agroecology in the next three years (2023 – 2025), in selected countries all over the world.
Opportunities to get involved
Contact the Project Leader if you would like to explore ways in which you can contribute to this project. Click on the name below to send an email:
María Rosa Mosquera Losada (University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain)
Key Partners / Projects include:
Spain: AF4EU, UNDERTREES, AE4EU, Argentina: FONTAGRO, UK: SENSE project, Brazil: EMBRAPA, Colombia: Agroforestry projects, USA: GRACEnet, Canada: EJP Project with diversified crop rotation sites
Project status: Active